At 02:14 AM 2/27/00 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, John Boyer wrote:
>
> > "Finally, however tragic the outcome, I will argue to my dying day that
> > this was the most idealistic war we have ever fought, fundamentally a war
> > for an abstraction: the freedom of a bunch of unfamiliar Asians at the end
> > of the world"
> > -- Professor John Roche, Advisor to Lyndon Johnson
>
>"save the gooks" and all that, right?

Actually, I have talked to many Vietnamese who believe just that, if not
better phrased. Included in this list is a friend of mine who was
imprisoned for 13 years simply because he had one had the "honor", his
word, of translating for a visiting Vice President Nixon.
But really, the main reason that I like the quote is because of who it is
from.
For the record, I am more in the camp of allowing those who would enslave
themselves to just go ahead. Then there is the statement by John Quency
Adams to the effect that Americans are friends of liberty everywhere, but
custodians only of their own.

But, speaking of colonialism and a "save the gooks" mentality, I think
America has an impressive record of foreign intervention in the 20th
century. Where exactly, do people live under oppression because of US
colonialism?